Note: I wrestled with whether to categorize this as ‘Required Reading’ or as a ‘Review.’ I will stick with ‘Review’ for now but know that it was a difficult decision…

I finished Bad Feminist last week, and since then, I cannot stop thinking of this powerful, hilarious, and moving collection of essays. Gay is an astute cultural and literary analyst, and a professor at an unnamed college in a Midwest state in the United States. Her prose is especially well written: concise, unpretentious, and every word is there for a specific purpose. Her essays read as an effortless exercise in the art of analysis.

First things first: Gay writes that feminism is a movement created by people, and people are fallible, irrational, and can be assholes (my emphasis). This is true. So when she goes on to explore, dissect, and otherwise ruminate over myriad topics such as reality television programming or Scrabble championships or Daniel Tosh’s infamous rape joke, Gay proceeds to examine each subject in nuanced and careful ways. It’s not enough to simply analyze a topic. Instead, she also strives to identify how associated variables impact the topic at hand. I’m terribly impressed by this approach; this kind of analysis yields incredible rewards for the reader. As I read the text, I often had the sensation of luxuriating in these careful details.

As I read through her essays, two main themes resonated with me:

Feminism is not a catch-all movement. What I mean is that the movement doesn’t promise you that you can have it all, and the Kate Spade purse, too. What I found most memorable is Gay’s assertion that people, as a whole, should adjust their improbably high expectations of the feminist movement to something more… realistic. Feminism = Equal opportunity for all genders to have choices in matters economic / financial, digital, social, and cultural.

Feminism is contextual. Unfortunately, equality does not mean equity. Throughout several of her essays, Gay examines how the mainstream feminist movement does not equitably address the needs of any person who is not white, able-bodied, cisgender, and heterosexual. Historically, the feminist movement in the United States has barely acknowledged — let alone addressed — how the combined cultural legacies of racism, classism, ableism, heteronormativity, and rigid gender roles (and identities) impact people; how these cultural and systemic factors prevent equal access to the very opportunities ostensibly provided by the feminist movement. It is crucial to recognize such facts.

Gay is a champion at identifying each piece of the intersectionality puzzle in her essays. Incredibly (in my opinion), she makes the exercise look simple. Gay is rightfully discomforted that she exists in a system that fails to meet so many people’s needs, and she captures very well the persistent and disquieting despair that bleeds into a person once they realize this fact.

I enjoyed Gay’s work with a profound appreciation. So few writers can be thoughtful and authentic about such difficult topics, and I feel grateful that I get to read these essays. If you’re interested in learning more about Gay but cannot commit to Bad Feminist right now, I highly Gay’s delightful TED Talk (available here). Her last line is as close to perfect as I can imagine on this topic: “I am a bad feminist. But I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.”

Excitement Level: All the stars in this galaxy.

Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review. I checked this book out from the local library, and reviewed it on my own.